


Thirty Years Young

by Nyanshadowforce



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Like I have no idea where this is going but I'm doing it anyway, Very Very WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 06:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14129844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyanshadowforce/pseuds/Nyanshadowforce
Summary: Jessie's once experienced being a stranger to a place she called home, lost to time thanks to forces beyond her. Then, she adapted. She fixed what made the Commonwealth such a cruel place and made it home again, finding sanctuary in those who had been just as lost as herself.But now, she's returned home as a stranger again. An old friend who the people don't recognize, or who they only remember through legend. For all it's worth? The Commonwealth stayed fixed. it stayed whole, because it remembers her. It's remembered for 30 years.





	Thirty Years Young

**Author's Note:**

> Jessie's alone- And something is very, very wrong.
> 
> Edit: Did some heavy edits in response to a critique! Thanks, Shadowgale96!

When Jessie wakes up, The world is reeling. Greys and whites blur as her eyes dart around the space and her ears ring. She’s lying on her back, her whole body numb and tingling, feeling like its been bent and shifted in a way no human body should be. Everything is cold. _Is there blood?_

She gasps when she sits up. Whatever happened, it knocked the air from her lungs. Her head’s spinning and all she can focus on is catching her breath. Her radium rifle, Atom’s Eye, is held tightly in her lap. 

Her voice comes out in a croak. She’s amazed how much it almost doesn’t sound like her own, but that sort of thing tends to happen when you’ve seemingly survived the bulk of an explosion. “Piper? You alright?” 

No response. 

Jessie wipes the dust from her glasses with her sleeve. Breath slowing, she examines the space surrounding her. 

The large room is different and simultaneously unchanged. It’s still whole, with the dozens of dozens of modules lined up against the walls, tables leaning lopsided due to uneven legs, yellow-grey papers scattered about them. Yet, Something’s missing from all of these things. Something’s been taken from them, their former selves lost. The remnant institute technology is no longer blinking or whirring, the metal hatches of their bodies hanging open to reveal a void of ripped wires and stolen technology inside. The hatches sway slightly as if moved by a breeze. Those unmoving reside on the floor, long torn from their hinges.

Scorch marks stain the concrete of the laboratory, trailing to the center platform in a pattern reminiscent of a thistle flower. That’s all the Relay is anymore; A platform. Jessie struggles to stand, still recovering from the shock and flash. 

She stumbles while stepping from what was once the relay. More and more details become apparent to her, feeding the ‘off’ feeling in her gut. There’s dust and debris everywhere, the floor and walls cracked and stained from a blast. Where Piper was standing the last time Jessie saw her, there’s dried blood, old blood, a muddled red-brown stain embedded in the stone. It sends a creeping shiver down her spine. The kind of feeling someone got when suddenly realizing they were alone, wondering if they or their friends were the ones lost.

Jessie calls again, her tone considerably more panicked than before. The only thing that calls back is the reverberation of her own voice. She tries again, almost angrily, but she doesn’t know why. There’s nothing to be angry about yet. 

Wait, no. Maybe there is. She’s alone and confused, like a wild animal. She has every right to be angry. The anger is there, but is outmatched by confusion. Greater yet, fear. 

Her gait is slow as she limps through the halls of the facility, calling for Piper occasionally but realizing there might not be an answer.

 _How long was I out? Did Piper leave me, to get help?_ No, Jessie thinks. _She would have carried Me. Wait, was my armor too heavy? No, she would have left our stuff, come back for it later. We’ve done that before._

The whole place reminds her of the Switchboard, when she and Deacon retook it for the sake of reclaiming information. Only during the assault did she consider that maybe this was a sister location, but it seemed rather as a side-project by the Institute. Located in Lexington, maybe it was too close to the Switchboard to be safe in the eyes of the pre-war government. 

Especially now, with the amount of chaos and signs of struggle littering the halls and chambers of stark white and grey. Its not alive in the way it was when she and Piper breached it. Everything is quiet, stained and dusted, looted and unwelcoming. Just like the Switchboard, rotted corpses and scrap are scattered like shrapnel after a detonation. Its so quiet Jessie can still feel her heart beating, blood rushing faster at the sight of the bodies.

Jessie stops to look down at one, her stomach twisting. This one- a lot of them, actually -is wearing an institute lab coat, slumped up against a wall. The vacant eye sockets of the skull face her like it expects her to say something, and Jessie expects the same, but no response comes of it. Nothing more seems to articulate right as her thoughts continue to twist and blur. 

The corpse, so black and decayed that it may as well be a skeleton, is someone she shot to kill no less than thirty minutes ago. The bullet exploded into his collarbone, and he had been knocked back with another shot to his ribcage. He shouldn’t be so far gone, but there’s a lot of things that shouldn't _be_ right now. 

Moving past more corpses, she prays not to see one with a red coat.

The degree of eerie developments becomes nauseatingly apparent as Jessie enters a room with a radio, somehow still on and still getting signal. Panning out is the end of a song Jessie doesn’t recognize. After that, she’s greeted with the voice of a DJ she doesn’t know. 

“Go-od morning from Diamond City to all you early risers out there! For those of you in the upper stands, or maybe out on the country, the sunrise has never been more beautiful.” 

_The sunrise?_ Jessie checks the clock on her Pip-Boy. 6:32 a.m. She and Piper started the assault at two in the afternoon, it couldn't have taken more than an hour and a half to get to the laboratory. 

Something is wrong. Very, very wrong.

Wherever Jessie’s gone, she’s been gone too long. _How long does it take for bodies to rot? Dammit, Jess. You studied this stuff, get it together._ solid thoughts struggle to come to her through estimates and complications, nothing other than _too long._

Jessie paws at her pack. It feels as full as it had when she came in with Piper, packed with food, ammo, spare pistols, and everything else a wastelander needed to survive. Of whatever the relay had taken from her, at least it hadn’t taken her stuff, even if most of her friends agreed that maybe she didn’t need as many guns as she tended to carry on hand. 

She never much cared for that, because if she hadn’t had the stock of her .45-70, it would have been excessively harder to bust open the hatch to the outside, forcing pieces of stone and debris from the exit. 

Jessie only realizes how thickly the facility stank of death when she pulls herself up into the crisp morning air and takes a gasping breath like a newborn puppy. The building masking the exit hatch is crumbling, Half of the roof completely collapsed and the front all but broken into pillars and archways. The concrete is bejeweled in the morning’s frost. The doorway just barely stands with the door hanging sideways on one hinge. Jessie doesn’t go for the door, she looks for a way up. 

One of the steps of the ancient stairway collapses underfoot as she rushes upward, but she can’t care less. Something about being outside heightens her senses, her fear, every part of her telling her to run but not to where, like a radstag overcome in paranoia from a whisper in the brush. Her heart beats like the predator’s steps. 

“Piper!” Jessie shouts into Lexington as she stops herself against the concrete block of the roof, leaning over as she shouts. “Pip-er!” 

She doesn’t care if this is a rookie move, something that would attract any raider looking for blood. She begs that it’s a nightmare, that maybe some stray sniper can just land a shot and wake her up already. She hopes to black out and wake up with Hancock shaking her, telling her to go easy on the jet next time with a playful spark in his eyes. 

But it doesn’t happen. Her voice echoes uselessly through office buildings and scorched metal. A wild dog on the street raises its head at her, but turns around the corner with its tail low. 

No one responds. No one shoots. She is alone.

She looks upward to the horizon, where the tail gleam of the milky way gave its last battle against the rising light. The Commonwealth seems as whole as it’s always been, but like everything else, it persists to feel disturbed. Structures more damaged than she can remember, junk and scrap shifted in places that could be different, but places she isn’t sure of. It is as much of a dream as it is a nightmare; A setting so familiar twisted into something unsettling and anomalous. All while it would look normal to someone who never knew it as home.

Jessie scans the rooftops of the town, but she doesn’t know what she’s looking for. She knows she won’t find Piper, not soon. So she turns back to the stairway, ready to leave, unsure of where. 

When her gaze turns to the southwest, she stops dead, and her chilled blood freezes. 

Something’s missing from the skyline. A warship, raw metal and power, the defining symbol of the Brotherhood of Steel’s presence in the Commonwealth. 

The Prydwen is gone. 

Jessie doesn’t even head for the stairway. She leaps over the block onto the roof of another building, and from there, onto the hood on an old corvenga. She ignores the ache and sting in her ankles as she sprints down the street. 

She has to get to Diamond City. She has to find Piper.


End file.
